The pain caused by rejection can fester in a person and lead them to commit dark acts. The speaker of John Donne’s seething poem, The Apparition, seeks revenge from his lover who spurned his amorous affections. Despite the speaker’s tender efforts, his lover rejects him seemingly without remorse, prompting the speaker to seethe with rage. He desires for her to know the same agony that he faced from her repudiation. In the poem, Donne focuses on the anger that drives a man to search for retribution after what he deems a harrowing rejection even to woman who he claimed to love. The poem starts with a charged accusation. The speaker accuses his former lover of being a heartless “murd’ress” whose “scorn” has slain him. Her rejection has killed…show more content… He wickedly warns his beloved that when “[her] sick taper … begins to wink” she will know that he has manifested in the room. The OED defines taper as “A wax candle, in early times used chiefly for devotional or penitential purposes” (OED s.v taper 1.a). Moreover, wink is defined in the OED as “to emit quick intermittent flashes; to twinkle”(OED s.v. winks, 2.c). The speaker forewarns that the flicker of the candle’s light indicates his presence. The taper - originally intended for holy devotions - now denotes the phantasm of the speaker in an borderline sacrilegious action that symbolizes the sins of the women. However, in the theme of sexuality and urges, Donne also uses taper and wink to allude to the arousal of the lover. The taper closely resembles male genitalia in the phallic form and this symbolically represents the sexual organs of his lover. Furthermore, in this century, wink also means “Of a light, a burning or glowing object” (OED s.v. winks, 2.c). The burning sensation of the taper, or genitalia, refers to the sexual arousal of the speaker’s lover. He mocks her and sneers “if thou stir, or inch to wake him / think Thou call'st for more,/ And in false sleep will from thee shrink.” Her new lover thinks that she craves more sex and he ignores her whims. The sexual arousal that Donne alludes to with taper and wink is…show more content… She now has regressed into a meek being who is now trembling with fright, which was the malevolent intention of the speaker. He describes her as a “poor aspen wench” who is “bath'd in a cold quicksilver sweat” when he has finally appeared before her. Aspen, according to the OED, was used in the seventeenth century to mean “tremulous, quivering; quaking, timorous,” which the speaker uses to illustrate the lover’s fear (OED s.v. aspen, 2 ). The use of aspen in the poem is further proved by the word quicksilver, defined as “resembling quicksilver; bright, rapid, unpredictable, mercurial” (OED s.v. quicksilver, 1). Her appearance rivals that of the ghost; she blanches and sweats in a profuse manner that resembles quicksilver. The speaker revels in how their situations have reversed; he is now in the position of power and the lover now quivers in fear. These such words effectively convey the terror that the speaker has afflicted on her for the transgressions she